Chapter XXV (3)

Scotch music is a good example of the fact that the favorite musical instruments of the different nations have undoubtedly caused some favorite group of notes, constituting _motives_ of a peculiar rhythm, which are employed with evident preference. Thus, the use of the minor seventh instead of the major seventh (as in "Wha'll be King but Charlie?"), and the sudden modulation from the minor key to the major key, a whole tone below, are in exact accord with the bagpipe, and are more certain in the strathspeys, reels and dances which are universally played on that instrument; the intervals of which are

with the bass of the drone emitting A, so that A minor must be regarded as the principal key of this instrument. Indeed, Macdonald, in his _Complete Tutor for the Great Highland Bagpipe_, gives the odd rule that the "piper is to pay no attention to the flats and sharps marked on the clef, as they are not used in pipe-music."

In Scotch music are also continually found motives of a rhythm in which the first note has only one-fourth the duration of the second. This is known as the Scotch catch or snap, and evidently originated in the strathspeys, though it is now a distinction of many fine songs, notably so of "Roy's Wife of Aldavalloch."

That these old melodies are the voice of ancient Scotland is proved by the fact that no modern musician has been able to imitate them. Haydn tried to rearrange some of them, and failed, and Geminiani blotted quires of paper in attempting to write a second part to the "Broom o' the Cowdenknowes." No: ere we can add anything to the national music of Scotland we must restore the precise national conditions of which it was the articulate idea.

English music, until the days of the Tudors, was really French: England sang, as all Europe did, the songs of the Troubadours. But the "Chanson de Roland" and the "Complaint of the Chatelain de Courcy" were not English strains, for a national song is a winged fact. France was the legitimate successor of the Troubadours, and many of their oldest songs would serve to-day as _airs de vaudeville_. The French national music has mostly grown out of civil dissensions and party conflicts. What scenes do the "Carillon," the atrocious "Carmagnole" and the "Marseillaise" bring up! The "Carillon" had been Marie Antoinette's favorite tune: it pursued her from her palace to her prison, startled her on her way to her trial, and was probably the last sound she heard as she lay bound under the guillotine.

When not breathing blood and anarchy French popular music has a wonderful range: it is gallant, mocking, elegant, or full of absolute nonsense and frivolity. In fact, French music has always been so intensely national that it would have been impossible for England to have long borrowed it; and in the days of the Tudors we find English character beginning to explain itself in those admirable tunes and ballads which form a regular and successive declaration of English principles, with their sound piety, broad fun, perfect liberty of speech and capital eating and drinking. They have neither the wailing grief nor the boisterous merriment of Celtic music, and they lack entirely the monotonous tenderness of the Troubadours; but they are full of buoyant, daring independence, and have a certain _homeliness_ which strikes in a very powerful manner some chord in the Anglo-Saxon heart.

The cosmopolitan nature of the German speaks to all the world in his music. Of all national musics it is the grandest and the most developed: we see this in the position it gives to rhythms. National musics with undeveloped rhythms are the speech of people just awakening, while music that has them strongly marked and regularly introduced belongs to people of fully-matured energies. Only in the _Jodlers_ and _Landlers_ of the Tyrolese, Austrian and Swiss mountains is the original Teutonic iambic preserved in its purity. In all other German music every kind of rhythm is met with, no kind being predominant. For the musical language of Germany embraces not only the few octaves of passion, but the whole keyboard of existence. It has preludes, symphonies and sonatas for every phase of life. Nothing smaller than this range would suffice to express the multiform ideas of a people so thoughtful and cosmopolitan. And though by this universal sympathy German music may have lost a purely national life, it is a most sufficing compensation to have gained the power of expressing the ideas of a whole epoch.

Musical taste in America is in progress of formation. We have no national music: we have not even a decided preference for any style. We like Beethoven and Chopin, but we also like Rossini and Donizetti and delight in Lecocq and Sullivan. In no respect is the national pride so utterly forgotten as in music. We give to all schools a fair hearing. The great German masters are household words: the national music of every land is welcome. We have been learning to like Italian opera at an insane cost; we have kindly winked at the follies of opera-bouffe; probably nowhere in the world are the intellectual depths of a German symphony and the passionate declamation of an Italian recitative more thoroughly appreciated. This is the natural musical exposition of our complex and various life. This wondrous variety, which indicates possibilities not yet revealed, pleases us without being always clear to our feelings and intellect. Still, we shall not ask, with the Frenchman, "Sonate, que veux-tu?" We are satisfied with what the present affords, and what new masters shall appear or what new instruments be invented we know not. Always the epochs will have their own interpreter. One hundred years ago who had imagined a Weber or Steinway piano, that piece of furniture with a soul in it?

It has been suggested to me while writing this paper that national melodies are in a great measure influenced by the physical features of the country in which they rise. I think very little so. It is true that the music of all mountainous countries has many points of resemblance, but it is because the people of such countries have strong mental and moral similitudes. Savages are not inspired by the most lovely scenery, and a collection of national airs from different parts of the world would not reveal to us whether they were written in valleys or on mountains or by the sounding seashore.

There are distinct ensigns by which national music may be as promptly detected as a ship by its colors. Spanish airs have in them the rapid twinkling, so to speak, of the guitar; the mountain-melodies of Switzerland recall the open notes of the Alp-horn; the Irish and Scotch musics have their marks as plainly impressed upon them as the physiognomy of the peoples is distinct, and it is nothing to the purpose to say that they have been cleverly imitated: the mark still remains a fact, and is the mysterious specialty that thrills the rich, the poor, the soldier and the churchman, the peasant and the exile. Whatever analogy exists between a country and its music is mainly with the inward character of the people themselves, and is generally too profound to be theorized upon. We only know that at every step we advance in the science of music we are deciphering what is written within us, not transcribing anything from without.

Nor as Americans are we insensible to the value of a national music. The few airs which have any claim to represent us in this capacity have done service that no money can estimate. During the late war wherever the rebel flag was raised it was necessary to silence "Yankee Doodle." Like the "Marseillaise," it was an institution before which its enemies trembled; and when we have produced or annexed something infinitely grander we shall not forget the saucy, free-and-easy, mind-your-own-business melody that carried the nation cheerfully through two great crises.

AMELIA E. BARR.

MALLSTON'S YOUNGEST.

The railroad-village of Fairfield woke up one spring morning and found a clumsy blue car, with a skylight in its roof, standing on the common near the blacksmith-shop. Horses and tongue were already removed, the former being turned into the tavern pasture and the latter stowed in the tavern barn. A small sky-colored ladder led up to the door of this artistic heaven, which remained closed long after a crowd of loungers had gathered around it.

The Fairfield loungers were famously lazy savages, though to the last degree good-natured and obliging. They wore butternut overalls and colored shirts, a few adding the picturesque touch of bright handkerchiefs and broad straw hats: there were a few coats in various stages of rags and grease, and one or two pairs of boots, but the wearers of these put on no airs over the long ankles and sprawling toes which blossomed around them. The whole smoking, stoop-shouldered, ill-scented throng were descendants of that Tennessee and Carolina element which more enterprising Hoosiers deplore, because in every generation it repeats the ignorance and unthrift branded so many years ago into the "poor white" of the South.

Those who could read traced the legend "Photographic Car" on the sides of the vehicle, and with many a rude joke each bantered the other to have his picter took for such purposes as skeerin' stock off the railroad-track or knockin' the crows stiff. Their scuffling and haw-haws waked the occupant of the car, who rose in his bunk and drew the curtain from a window. The boys saw his face and hushed. Raising the window, he scattered a bunch of handbills among them, which set them all to scrambling, and, when they had caught the bills, to struggling with large and small type which announced that an unrivalled photographer would be in that vicinity in a very few days with his beautiful travelling-car, giving everybody an opportunity of securing such tin-types and photographs as only the large cities turned out, and at the lowest possible prices.

Presently the photographer appeared at his own door and looked abroad. The tender spring morning, though it glorified surrounding woods and rich farming-lands, could do little for this dilapidated village, which consisted of one lane of rickety dwellings crossed at right angles by the Peru Railroad, a stern brick building, a wooden elevator and a mill. It was a squalid sight, though the festive season of the year and that glamourous air peculiar to Indiana brooded it. The photographer surveyed his new field with an amused sneer, and descended the steps to go to his breakfast at the tavern, a peak-roofed white frame set among locust trees--the best house on the street. Before it stood that lozenge-shaped sign on a fat post which stands before all country taverns, making a vague, lonesome appeal to the traveller.

The loungers moved in groups on the station-platform, their hands in their pockets and their necks stretched forward, eying the stranger.

Out of the blue distance on the railroad two plumes of steam rose suddenly: then a black object stood up on the track and gave two calls at a crossing. Double-shuffles were danced on the platform, as if the approaching train charged these vagabonds with some of its own strength. It screamed, and bore down upon this dilapidated station to stop for one brief minute, change mail-sacks and gaze pityingly out of its one eye at the howling crew which never failed to greet it there. People in the cars also looked out as if glad they were not stopping, and a few with long checks in their hats, who appeared to be travelling to the earth's ends, were envied by a girl approaching the post-office in the brick block.

She waited near the photographic car until the train passed, her lip curling at this blue van and the pretensions of its owner.

Later she came out of the post-office by a back hall, and, darting a fierce look at Jim Croddy, who ran against her in his performance of the double-shuffle, took her way across the common, crushing her letters in her hand. This time she scarcely looked at the photographic van, but with dilated eyes and set teeth pursued her path into the springing weeds. The photographer, who had returned, looked at her, however, and found her individuality so attractive that he watched her swift step until it took her out of sight within the doorway of a brick residence detached from the village by a meadow and long lawn.

The young man opened his car and prepared for business. His landlady was going to bring her grandchild to be photographed. A locker received his primitive couch, and he further cleared the deck for action by stowing in the back apartment where he prepared his chemicals all remaining litter. Jim Croddy and kindred spirits ventured to look in.

"See here, boys," inquired the photographer, "couldn't one of you get me a bucket of water from somewhere?"

They would all do it. The heartiest and most obliging set of idlers in the world, they almost fought for the pail, and two, taking it between them, cantered to the pump in front of the post-office. The rest were fain to enter, treading each other's bare heels as they tumbled up the steps.

"Don't you want your pictures taken?" inquired the artist, quizzically surveying his shaggy crowd.

"We ain't got no money," replied Bill Stillman, the smallest but readiest-tongued.

"You got money, Bill," retorted Leonard Price, a parchment-colored wisp of nineteen who had recently become a widower.

"I got to git clo'es with it if I hev'. There's Mallston: git him to set for _his_ picter."

Mallston was hooted for as he came across the dewy grass on feet of brawn, shaming puny rustics by his huge physique. The photographer mentally limned him: a bushy, low-browed head and dark, reddish, full-lipped face, bearded; muscle massed upon his arms and tatter-clothed legs; a deep, prominent chest; hands large, black, powerful; the whole man advancing with a lightness which in some barbaric conqueror would have been called dignified grace.

Mallston had nothing to answer for himself. He stood folding his arms and looking in. It was said he had African blood in his veins--barely enough to stain the red of his skin, pinch up his children's hair and give them those mournful, passionate black eyes through which the tragedy of the race always looks. But so vague, so mere a hearsay, was this negro stain, if it existed at all, that he had married a white wife, and moved in society unchallenged by these very fastidious descendants of Carolina and Tennessee.

Mallston's wife had lately added a son to his family. He had two sons before, also two daughters. From any standpoint it seemed an unnecessary addition when the economist considers that he had no means of support except his big-fingered paws, and these, though very willing, depended on chance jobs and days' works given him by other men. In face of these facts the youngest was there as well as the oldest--scarcely seven; the second, scarcely five; and the third and fourth, aged three and a half and two--in his rented house of one room, containing beds in opposite corners, a table and a cooking-stove in front of the fireplace. A generous family and scant provision for it being the mode in Fairfield, however, Mallston may not have seen his desperate position, especially with summer and harvest wages coming. Just now he was out of a job, having finished a ditching contract, and his black, speculative eyes looked anxiously at the photographer.

"Come, clear now!" exclaimed that young man with some authority to his loafers: "I am going to have some sitters."

The landlady and her grandchild were already coming to take advantage of morning sunlight and the domestic lull before dinner. With them came a curious neighbor in ill-made, trailing calico and dejected sun-bonnet, who walked with her hands on her hips and puckered her upper lip, with consciousness of the loss of two front teeth, when she laughed. As they proceeded at a pace regulated by the toddling child, they encountered an old woman with no teeth at all, whose nose and chin leaned very much toward each other: her grizzled hair curled under a still more dejected sun-bonnet, and, setting down a basket of clothes, she stood panting from exertion and wiping her wan face on the bonnet cape.

"I'm a-garn to hick'ry that Bill," she exclaimed weakly. "I tole him to carry me wash-water, and here he is stannin' round thish yer car! George and John's just out, too, and so's Foster. Soon's they git the'r vittles they up and leave me to do the best I kin. Laws! who's garn to pay out money fer fortygraphs? If folks all had to work as hard as I do, they wouldn't have no money fer no such things, so they wouldn't. It 'ud stan' 'em in hand to be savin'."

"Why don't you drive off some yer good-fer-nothin' boys and make 'em do somethin', Mis' Stillman?" bantered the neighbor.

"Well, they've all been a-workin'," relented the mother. "Bill, he's as good a feller to work as ever was if he don't git with a lot of orn'ry boys. Hit hurts Fawt to work stiddy, so it does.--Bill, come here and tote these clo'es home fer me."

Bill came, ruddy and laughing from a scuffle, and walked off with the basket.

"And git the wash-water and make a fire under the kittle," called his mother.

"I'll be apt to," responded Bill.

"Come along into the daguerreyan car, Mis' Stillman," invited the landlady. "You never see the inside o' one, did you?"

"Laws! is that wher' you're garn to? I can't stop but a minute. Hit looks mighty fine. The boys said this feller was drivin' into town last night when meetin' broke. Who's garn to have their picter took?--You, Jane?"

"Me?" replied the neighbor. "Laws! no: I ain't rich."

"Oh, you'll change your minds," drawled the landlady patronizingly, as became a lady of means: "he takes 'em reel cheap."

The photographer met this group at his door and assisted them into the car, from which all his earlier visitors had dispersed except Mallston.

Mallston stood at the steps and watched the landlady's grandchild prepared for a sitting. The rabble had begun their morning business of pitching horseshoes, but his interest was held by that little child--its fresh clothes, rings of black hair and pomegranate coloring. The artist, having placed his camera, was in the farther room preparing his plate. When he came out and was in the act of closing the door he noticed Mallston, and asked, "Do you want a job?"

The barbarian did decidedly.

"Come into the back room, then, and help me."

Mallston went striding through the car, and placed himself in an obedient attitude behind the partition.

"Laws!" exclaimed Mrs. Stillman, standing between the camera, where the artist was burying his head under a black cloth, and the object to be photographed, "when we lived in Bartholomew county--'twas the year after we moved f'm Johnson county--Foster and John they was little fellers then, and I did want the'r picters that bad, so I did. But the'r pap he 'lowed it was a waste o' money. Pore man! he was a mighty hard worker: he'd go a mile'd to make a cent, and then he'd lose it all with bad management, so he would. But I had easy times them days, with everything to my han': I spun and wove all the jeans the men-folks wore, and we milked a dozen cows--"

"Will you please move aside?"

"Git out o' the way, Mis' Stillman: the man can't see through ye."

"Oh!" exclaimed the old woman, jerking herself from the photographer's line of vision, "I didn't go fer to git in the way. But this ain't doin' my washin'," she added, moving toward the entrance. Here, on a little shelf, she found some tiles and brushes, which she took up to examine and hold before the other women, who were seated awaiting the picture-taking. "What's these here things?"

"Artists' materials," replied the photographer, removing his head from under the black cloth, and that from the camera.--"Now, my little man, look straight at the hole in the box, and don't move.--That large brick house--keep perfectly quiet--across the field seems a good point to sketch from. Who lives there?"

"Harbisons," replied the landlady.

"Harbisons, eh? I suppose it was Miss Harbison I saw go past this morning?--Don't move, my little man."

"I do' know," demurred the washer-woman, whose sole recreation in life was the faculty of speech. "I ain't seen Mis' Harbison to town to-day. They's him and her and the boys. Both the boys is away f'm home now. What-fer lookin' woman?"

"It was a young lady in a wide hat."

"Oh, that's Miss Gill: she's some kin to 'em. She's a school-teacher to Bunker Hill or Peru. Laws! I hate to see anybody so proud."

"That's a good boy!" said the photographer. He removed his plate and carried it to the rear room, where he required the assistance of Mallston, who had watched the process with silent interest. Presently reappearing with the dripping negative, which he held for the women to see, he repeated incidentally, "Proud, is she, this Miss Gill?"

"Yes, she is, kind o'," testified the neighbor who was called Jane.--"It's a reel good one, ain't it?"

"If ye take as good as this all the time," cried the pleased landlady, holding off the negative and giving that excited drawl to the terminal word which may distinguish Kentuckians, for she claimed to be one, "every girl in town 'll be comin' after the'r picter-uh!"

"Except the proud Miss Gill."

The landlady, who had a moustache, bristled it over her square mouth: "I never ast much about her. She's kind o' yaller-complected, but some says she's smart. Bill Harbison was smart too, but he's all broke up now. They don't own nothin' but the house and grounds they're livin' in."

"Laws!" poured in the steady washer-woman, "I used to work fer Mis' Harbison when she was well off--I done knit socks and pieced quilts--and she was always liber'l, so she was. When we fust come here he was gittin' down with his last sickness, and we left a good place in Bartholomew county, fer _his_ folks they kep' a-writin', 'Here's the place, Billy: this is wher' you'll find the flitter tree and the honey pond.' And it wasn't never my will, but come we must; and you orto seen Fairfield then. Why, ther' wasn't nothin' but mud, so ther' wasn't.--My soul! if thern don't go Bill, and I know he ain't carried me no wash-water."

The artist helped her down the steps and asked her to come again, which courtesy she distrusted. She 'lowed he was p'tendin'. He throwed his head up like he was big-feelin'. It ruffled her that anybody should be big-feelin' over a pore widder-woman that took in days' washin's, and had a pack o' triflin' boys that et her out o' house and home.

Still, this old woman enjoyed the fruit trees' budding promise as she patted along the railroad, and perhaps some old thrill shot again as a meadow-lark uttered his short, rich madrigal from the weather-darkened fence.

"Ho, Mis' Stillman," called Mallston's wife, standing in her door with the youngest on her arm, "le's go over and see that ther' picter car."

"I done done it," responded the old woman.

By the end of two weeks this photographic car had done good execution on the community. The artist himself appeared friendly, which greatly assisted his trade, openness to familiarity being a prime virtue in all rustic neighborhoods. Every youngster who came to the store after groceries, with a bag slung over the horse's neck in which to carry them, gave pap no peace until means were furnished for a rosy-cheeked tin-type of himself in a pink, green or purple case. The Appledore girls, handsome daughters of a rich farmer, and therefore able to sit for pictures in Kokomo, or even Indianapolis, yet put on all their chains, rings and bracelets and went to the car to test this young photographer's skill. Mrs. Stillman received money from her daughter in Ellwood, together with the written command: "You go and git your fortygraph took fer me, mother: we don't none of us never know what's a-garn to happen." So she removed her black alpaca from its peg on the wall for her adornment, and came also, explaining to the neighbors that Kit sent the money, so she did, and was makin' a pore mouth about not havin' no picter of mother. And having got the picture, she used all her past trials and present misfortunes to save half the price, which she succeeded in doing.

Every day the artist had a few sitters. It was surprising how many of the bilious, bare-legged children who collected to gaze at his framed specimens were brought to be photographed, for most of the villagers were squalidly poor and the farmers were entering their busy season. During this time he had opened the Harbison domicile to himself, being son of a friend who had sat in the State legislature with Mr. Harbison. All Fairfield knew that he went there nearly every day, and that it was not to shoot with the long-bow on the lawn. They had no idea how he loved to lounge from one empty room to another of this picturesque, half-furnished house, and how he was gratified by the fitness of the inhabitants to their abode. He liked to see Miss Gill tuck a bunch of peach-blossoms in her coil of hair, and to feel the quickening influences of spring supplemented by her electricity.

Mrs. Harbison took her earth-loving hands from garden-making and went to show the young people the ferns in the woods. She pulled her sun-bonnet over her eyes and trod out with the solid steps of a woman bred to love the soil under her feet. The photographer sketched along the way, but he finally sat down by Little Wildcat where the water boiled over boulders, and Mrs. Harbison went farther to dig ginseng. There was a joyful hurry of birds all around. That leopard of the Indiana woods, the sycamore, repeated itself in vistas.

"Sycamores always look like dazzling marble shafts blackened with patches of moss," said the young man.

"And their leaves," said the girl sitting on the log not far from him, "smell like poetry. I spread them on my face late in summer after a shower and suck up their breath. But I never can put the sensation into words."

"How's that for a sycamore?" he asked, showing a scrap.

She examined it with great satisfaction: "Why do you go about with a photographic car? Why don't you set out to be an artist?"

He laughed: "Because there is so much of the vagabond in me, I suppose. Then I never had any education in art. Folks as poor as Job's turkey."

"But a man can do so much or so little."

"Well, when I'm going about with the car I see a great many odd people, and can pick up little striking things for studies. I get a living, too, such as it is, which I shouldn't do if I set up as an artist. Look here!" He turned over his book and showed an etching of Mallston stepping across the common carrying his youngest, with the four older children at his heels. One had sprawled, and was evidently lifting a howl to the paternal ear. They both laughed at it.

"He's a good fellow," remarked the photographer, "but there's no end to the ignorance and misery such creatures bring upon the world. He couldn't take decent care of himself, and he has a wife and five children hanging on him."

"It is just so with nearly all these people," exclaimed Miss Gill in high scorn. "They have no idea of what life should be--no ambition, and scarcely a soul to divide around among them all. It smothers me!" She threw her arms out impetuously. "I want such different things--the society of the cultivated, the stimulus of great natures. Maybe I could write something that would get before the public then."

"Have you ever sent anything East?" he inquired with a Hoosier's vast respect for older civilization.

"Yes," she answered with a falling inflection of voice and head. "But it's no use: I never shall amount to anything with my surroundings."

The water gurgled over its boulders and the green landscape sent up an exquisite loamy breath. The young people, both representing the afflatus of the State, met in one tragic look which ended in a smile.

Next morning Mallston took his usual post in the car, shifting from one bare foot to the other, while the photographer lounged on his locker waiting for custom. The native frequently parted his shaggy jaws, but considered how he should offer his information. He watched his employer with real attachment, and his dark red face deepened its hue around the eyes as he broke out, "We've got a little feller t' 'r house."

"What! not another one?"

"He's two month ole," explained Mallston.

"Oh, your youngest. Why, yes, I've seen him." Mallston was evidently surprised that so humble a creature as his youngest had attracted the great photographer's notice. "He's a fine youngster," added the latter.

Mallston was then emboldened to blurt out, "We've named him."

"You have? Well, what do you call him?"

"We called him after you."

"Why, here's an honor! How did you come to name him for me?"

"_I_ done it."

"Let me see: what can I do for him? Suppose you bring him over now while we aren't very busy and I'll take his picture."

Mallston grinned with pleasure: "My woman wanted his picter. My woman 'lowed mebby you wouldn't charge for it if you knowed he was a namesake."

"Certainly I won't. So bring him right along and we'll do our best for him."

It was some time before he reappeared, carrying his youngest in his arms, its cheeks polished and its wet hair turning over in rings, decked in its chief finery, a blue quilted cloak. The mother came along to hold her cherub in her lap. She was a long, raw-boned woman, immature in face under all her crust of care and tan, evidently distressed in her free waist by the tightness of her calico dress and in her unfenced feet by shoes.

"What are you going to do with the baby?" inquired Miss Gill kindly as she encountered this group at right angles on her return from the post-office.

"Garn with him to the man to git his picter. Come in and see him took," invited Mrs. Mallston timidly.

The young woman, ready to seize on any distraction, went in, scarcely understanding that her bruised ambition reached for healing to such homely, lowly natures as these.

The artist was glad to see her, and she sat on the locker while preparations went on. She exchanged amused glances with him when the other Mallstons flocked to the steps, bellowing in various keys for their mother, and on their being swung in by one arm and placed in a row on the opposite locker, she gazed at them in turn, wondering what the future held out to such lumps of dirt and sombre black eyes.

Mallston set his youngest on the mother's lap and looked at it with sneaking fondness. The whole tribe seemed equally dear to him, but this youngest appealed to his strength. Mrs. Mallston was not celebrated as a tender mother. She went after pails of water and left her children playing beside the railroad-track; their tattered and ludicrous appearance bespoke her unskilfulness with the needle; she was said to have scalded the eldest boy with a skilletful of hot water in which she had soaked bacon, pouring it out of the window on his head. But she probably did as well as she knew how, and Mallston did much better. The photographer watched him go back a dozen times to straighten the baby's sturdy legs, tap it under the chin with his colossal fore finger, cluck in the laughing red cavern of his mouth and change the folds of its quilted cloak with quite a professional air. What were poverty, the world's neglect, hard labor and circumscribed life to this man? That muscle which gathered and distributed the streams of his body may have been to him a heaven in which these five youngsters ministered as angels.

The young man felt moved with an emotion he resisted: "My God! can it be that this savage is right in his instincts, and I am wrong? Can some peculiar blessing of Heaven rest on the man who dares Fate for family love? Or is the poor wretch's fondness a recompense for his overburdened lot?"

The baby took a fine picture. Mallston stood by a window and gazed at the large tin-type. His full lips dropped apart and his head leaned sidewise. He turned to his wife and said with a foolish expression, "If the little feller 'ud happen to drop off now we got sumpin' to remember him by."

"My childern's kind o' sickly," remarked his wife, marshalling forth her quartette, "fer all they look so hearty."

* * * * *

The photographic car remained day after day, although sitters seldom came now, for even the loafers were helping to put in crops. The horses which should have dragged it out almost any dewy morning were not exactly eating their heads off, being turned upon pasture, but the landlord was famous for getting his entertainment's worth. As long as weekly board-bills were paid he said it was none of his business if the man stayed all summer.

On Monday the photographer resolved, "I will start on Wednesday;" on Wednesday he decided, "I will wait till Saturday;" and on Saturday, "It's too late in the week now, but I _must_ go next Monday."

Mrs. Harbison, when interviewed about the generous portion of time he spent on her lawn with her summer visitor, answered with downrightness, "Well, what if he does like to come to our place? We know all about his folks. And if them two wants to sit and talk, they're fit company fer each other, and I reckon it won't hurt 'em. So what you going to do about it?"

The village was going to talk about it. The female population gathered at the storekeeper's house, their favorite rallying-place because the storekeeper's wife had no opinions of her own, but made a good echo to whatever was said, and there they judged that Gill girl for taking up with strangers like she done, so stuck up, and hoped it would turn out he was a married man, and wouldn't that bring her down?

Meanwhile, the photographer stretched himself on his oilcloth-cushioned locker and stared at the now fully-unfurled woods, without one mental glance at the vivid moss in its shades, its four varieties of ferns or the ruined cabin with one side thrown down, showing nickers of sunlight through the gaps of its fireplace. He called himself ill names for remaining where he was, and made a crazy picture of a photographic car seesawing along the country roads, with a figure he well knew sitting on the platform beside him as he drove. It was so absurd, but he quoted Mrs. Dalles's song of "Brave Love" while he etched:

We could not want for long,
While my man had his violin
And I my sweet love-song.

The world has aye gone well with us,
Old man, since we were one:
Our homeless wanderings down the lanes,
They long ago were done.

Then, across some chasm of indefinite time, he saw a studio and himself happy at an easel, with this devoted dark face resting against his side, reciting her work to him and quivering with joy at some sign of success. But the whole panorama dissolved at a breath.

"Now, aren't you a nice fellow," he addressed himself, "a brilliant rascal, a wise genius, to be thinking of such a thing?"

Miss Gill was returning from the woods with a full basket before the morning heat came on. A few women at the storekeeper's fence looked sidewise at each other as she paused to chat under the photographer's window.

The morning was so clear that every object stood in startling relief. A plume of steam far up the leafy railroad vista heralded the Peru express's lightning passage through the town. Scarcely a lounger was left on the platform. Mallston had a job of cleaning the cellar for the storekeeper, and at intervals appeared from its gaping doors with a basket of decayed potatoes on his shoulders. The landscape rung with bird-songs, and the girl, who had skimmed the cream off such a morning, looked up and laughed at her dejected friend. She had purple violets tucked into her coil of hair, her belt and under her collar.

"What are you doing here? Why aren't you out trying to catch the effect of day-twilight in the thick woods?"

"I've been trying," he replied without smiling, "to catch the effect of a rash action--and a woman's face."

"How solemn! Let me see it. Is it Mrs. Stillman's?"

"No, it isn't: it's my wife's."

Her half-lifted hand dropped. While her eyes met his without blenching she turned ghastly white, her face seeming to wither into sudden age.

The express-train whistled. Only a moment before its steam-plume had been her symbol of rushing success in life, and now, for some scarcely apprehended reason, she felt that the train and Fate were running her down. With intuitive resistance and a defiant sweep of her body she turned toward it and screamed aloud.

The photographer could not credit this rapid change to himself when he saw upon the track a small rough cart drawn by Mallston's oldest girl and containing his youngest stretched upon a dirty pillow. The express was coming down-grade at full speed, but at its whistle the oldest child turned off the track and tried to drag her burden across the rail. The cart upset, and the baby sprawled, crying, between the rails, while his sister fled crying toward home.

This whole occurrence was a flash: it seemed to the spectators they had barely started forward with their blood curdling, the engine had but screamed, and Mallston was merely seen dropping a basket of potatoes and leaping with upright hair and starting eyes, before the whole thing was over. The train stopped with such a recoil that many passengers were thrown from their seats: the engineer dropped from his cab, and there was a crowd.

Mallston was jammed into a heap against a tall board fence which surrounded the store-lot. The baby sprawled near him, where he had thrown it when the engine struck him.

"Are you hurt?" asked the photographer, turning him over.

He sat up, looking dazed and ludicrous: "Wher's the little feller?"

"I got him," panted the breathless mother, shaking the child from side to side as she showed it to him.

"_He's_ all right," cried the engineer, "but I hit you. Where are you hurt?"

"I ain't hurt no place," said Mallston, crawling up on all fours, "'cept wher' my back and head hit the fence." He stood up grinning at the excited crowd, and put his sneaking, protecting fingertips under the baby's chin. The youngest had ceased to yell during the fright, but this touched him off again.

"You skeered the poor little feller," said Mallston severely, but the engineer was already mounting his cab, laughing with relief. The train passed on, people crowding the platforms.

Women felt the baby's limbs: there were no hurts except a bruise on one fat leg and a little more than the usual amount of dirt on its face.

"Are you sure you aren't injured?" urged the photographer, shaking his man.

But Mallston looked into his eyes with a preoccupied mind, and said, as to the only person present who would appreciate the depth of the remark, "I couldn't a-stood that, by jeeminy!" Tears stood in his big bovine eyes.

The group dispersed, many glad to have enjoyed such a genuine sensation, Mrs. Stillman declaring to the neighbor and the landlady she hadn't had such a skeer since the time _he_ was took in the dead o' night with bleedin' at the lungs, and not a doctor in ten mile, and every minute like to be his last, so it was.

The artist followed Miss Gill from the spot. She picked up her basket beside the photographic car, her face so sublimated it seemed never to have known any other look.

"I didn't understand human nature," she confessed to the photographer, who had entered his car and again appeared at the window above her. "That fellow has the poetry in him that I can't write out. I'm afraid I'm going to cry."

The artist held down his sketch-book to her. Dabbing back her tears with one hand, she took it with the other and exclaimed at once, "Why, you've sketched _me_!"

"When a man like that dares so much for home happiness in this world, I think I can dare a little, poor, struggling dog as I am. I called that a while ago the picture of my wife; and it shall be--my _woman_," infusing the idiom of his native State with its primitive, tender meaning.

She handed back the book, and he took it, with her hand.

"Do you dare?" trembled the girl with a laugh, mindful that all Fairfield was out.

"I think I do," he replied, smiling also as he followed her eyes toward a group proceeding down the railroad--"even in spite of that."

Mrs. Mallston was walking beside her husband, making a display of ankle-bone under her scant calico wrapper, her sun-bonnet flapping to her nose, the four juveniles able to walk dangling from her fingers or drapery. Mallston, straight as a hickory tree, carried his youngest on his bosom, patting its cheek with his horny, potato-scented palm.

M.H. CATHERWOOD.

THE EARLY DAYS OF MORMONISM.

For many years both before and after the Revolution the western part of New York was claimed by Massachusetts. The dispute was finally settled in 1786 by the latter State retaining the title to the soil westward of a meridian line extending from Pennsylvania to Lake Ontario. The line was afterward ascertained to be the meridian of Washington. It passed near Elmira, through the county of Seneca, and pierced the town of Lyons in the county of Wayne. The area of the Massachusetts claim was more than seven million acres, or about fifteen counties as they are now arranged. The entire tract was sold in 1787 to Oliver Phelps and Daniel Gorman for one million dollars. Phelps and Gorman immediately proceeded to Canandaigua and obtained the Indian title to one third of the tract. A land-office was opened in that village, the first of its kind in America. But the sales, although rapid, prevented the ruin neither of the purchasers nor of Robert Morris, the financier of the Revolution, who came forward to help them. The Holland Land Company profited by these misfortunes. The rich valleys of the Genesee and its tributaries more than made good its promises to actual settlers, as is readily proved by the waving fields of grain which greet the traveller through that section to-day.

In the year 1815 there came to the town of Palmyra, in Wayne county, a family by the name of Smith. Their former home was Sharon, Vermont. The father's name was Joseph, the mother's maiden name was Lucy Mack, and they were both of Scotch descent. Their son Joseph, afterward "the Prophet," was born on December 23, 1805. Hyrum, another son, helped his father at the trade of a cooper. Joseph, Jr., grew up with the reputation of being an idle and ignorant youth, given to chicken-thieving, and, like his father, extremely superstitious. Both father and sons believed in witchcraft, and they frequently "divined" the presence of water by a forked stick or hazel rod. Orlando Sanders of Palmyra, a well-preserved gentleman of over eighty, tells us that the Smith family worked for his father and for himself. He gives them the credit of being good workers, but declares that they could save no money. He also states that Joseph, Jr., was "a greeny," both large and strong. By nature he was peaceably disposed, but when he had taken too much liquor he was inclined to fight, with or without provocation.

The profession of a water-witch did not bring enough ducats to the Smith family; so the attempt was made to find hidden treasures. Failing in this, the unfolding flower of Mormonism would have been nipped in the bud had not Joe's father and brother been engaged in digging a well upon the premises of Clark Chase in September, 1819. Joseph, Jr., stood idly by with some of the Chase children when a stone resembling a child's foot was thrown from the well. The Chase children claimed the curiosity, as it was considered, but Joe seized and retained it. Afterward, for a series of years, he claimed that by the use of it he was enabled to discover stolen property and to locate the place where treasure was buried.

After living in Palmyra for about ten years, the Smith family moved southward a few miles and settled in Manchester, the northern town of Ontario county. Their residence was a primitive one, even for those days. William Van Camp, the aged editor of the _Democratic Press_ at Lyons, recalls the fact that it was a log house from the following circumstance. Martin Harris, a farmer near Palmyra, visited the Smiths while he was yet in doubt concerning the doctrines of Mormonism. One night, while he was in his room, curtained off from the single large room of the interior, there appeared to him no less a personage than Jesus Christ. Harris was informed that Mormonism was the true faith, and Van Camp knows that it was a log house, although no vestige now remains, because Harris told him that his celestial visitor was lying on the beam overhead!

One mile from the Smith residence was the farm of Alonzo Sanders, now owned by William T. Sampson, commander in the United States Navy. This farm is four miles south of Palmyra, on the road toward Canandaigua. It includes a barren hill which rises abruptly to the height of one hundred and fifty feet. The ridge runs almost due north and south, and from the summit there are beautiful views of the hills surrounding Canandaigua and Seneca Lakes. It is known to the present generation as "Gold Bible Hill:" to Joe Smith it was known as "the Hill Cumorah," where the angel Moroni announced to him the presence of the "golden plates" giving an account of the fate which attended the early inhabitants of America. With these plates would be found the only means by which they could be read, the wonderful spectacles known as the "Urim and Thummim." Joe was not averse to such a revelation, for his hazel rod and his "peek-stone" had already failed him. There had been various religious awakenings in the neighborhood, and when the various sects began to quarrel over the converts Joe arose and announced that his mission was to restore the true priesthood. He appointed a number of meetings, but no one seemed inclined to follow him as the leader of a new religion. In September, 1823, an angel appeared to him, forgave his many lapses from grace and announced the golden plates.

These plates, however, were not found for several years. In the mean time the scene of Smith's operations shifted along the banks of Seneca Lake and down the tributaries of the Susquehanna to the point where that river sweeps southward into Pennsylvania past a borough of its own name, and then northward into New York, before it finally crosses Pennsylvania on its way to the Chesapeake. The borough of Susquehanna forms an important station on the Erie Railway, one hundred and ninety miles north-west of New York City. All about the locality houses are built in little groups upon the steep hillsides: even the railroad-shops could not be erected before the ground was levelled for them. When the river first cut a channel through the Appalachin Mountains it was very saving of its strength. Should anything besides the river attempt to enter this valley it must either hang against the sides or swim.

Joe Smith had paid several visits to this region when the first settlers were struggling with the wilderness. It was a much wilder country than that about Palmyra, and the inhabitants were much more credulous. Upon these people Smith practised with his peek-stone. A number of aged persons now living in that vicinity give this description of the prophet: He was six feet or a trifle over in height; of stout build, but wiry; his hair and complexion were light; his eyes were blue and mild; and "he did not look as if he knew enough to fool people so," as one old lady expresses it. When "peeking" he kneeled and buried his face in his white stovepipe hat, within which was the peek-stone. He declared it to be so much like looking into the water that the "deflection of flight" sometimes took him out of his course. On a wilderness-hill--now a part of Jacob J. Skinner's farm--his peek-stone discovered a ton of silver bars which had been buried by weary Spaniards as they trudged up the Susquehanna. An expedition for their recovery was undertaken as soon as Smith could muster enough followers to do the work. Unlike St. Paul, Joe did not work with his own hands, and he did not hesitate to be chargeable to any one. Several round excavations were made on the crown of a hill, the largest of which was about thirty-five feet in diameter and of about the same depth. The water was drained toward the south, and a shanty covered the hole from the eyes of the scoffers and the profane. The diggers had proceeded with great labor, and were just ready to grasp the silver, when the charm moved it three hundred feet to the north-east. Joe tracked it with his peek-stone to its hiding-place. It was not so far under the surface this time--only about twenty feet--and the faithful again worked with a will. The dilatory movements of the silver caused anxiety to Mr. Isaac Hale, with whom the diggers had been "boarding round." Hale was a stiff old Methodist whose business judgment told him that he was taking too much stock in this "big bonanza." For all his anxiety, the silver again flitted away, and alighted fifty feet beyond the big hole. They determined to capture it if they ran the hill through a sieve. The third hole had been sunk fifteen out of the necessary twenty feet when the treasure once more jumped to the other side of the big hole. Then the prophet had a vision: the blood of a black sheep must be shed and sprinkled around the diggings. Black sheep were scarce, and while they waited for one the faithful obtained their needed rest. At length, no sheep appearing, Joe said that a black dog might answer. A dog, therefore, was killed, and the blood was sprinkled on the ground. After that the silver never went far away. Still, it waltzed about the big hole in such a lively manner that frequent tunnelling to effect its capture availed nothing. At last the prophet decided that it was of no use to dig unless one of their number was made a sacrifice. None of the faithful responded to his call, and thus the magnificent scheme was abandoned. Oliver Harper, one of the diggers who furnished the money, was soon afterward murdered. The prophet thought this might answer for a sacrifice: he again rallied the diggers, but the charm remained stubborn and would not reveal the silver.[2]

There was, however, another object for which Smith said the Lord had sent him to Susquehanna; and that was--a wife. Until he obtained one there was no use in trying to get certain buried treasures at Palymra. A headless Spaniard guarded it with great vigilance, but would, it appeared, be driven away if Smith should shake millinery and dry-goods bills at him. Joseph stopped at the house of Isaac Hale, already noticed as having furnished board to the diggers. Mr. Hale owned a farm on the north side of the river, a mile and a half below the present borough of Susquehanna. He had three daughters, two of them already married. The second daughter, Emma, was easily persuaded to join her fortunes with those of the adventurer. The father, however, made so much opposition that they crossed over into the State of New York, and were married at Windsor, a neighboring town. This was probably early in 1826. Mr. Hale threatened to shoot his son-in-law--the "Peeker," as he called him--if he ever returned.